Hiss Alger

Dear Quin

12/6/78

There is a 2-page memo after the long one it nay help you to read first.

I've read the Weinstein piece. He makes his case well - to the uninformed
and uncritical.

Ky disagreement includes over calling the FBI bustlers. It is not, any sore
than any one of us can bumble and any sore than a certain amount of this is built
into any bureaucracy, sore into an authoritarian one, which is the FBI is and was.

Superficially what I address in the two-page sene say appear to be bumbling,

I believe it is not. For example, if an agent without subject-matter knowledge was
assigned, he would not be a bumbler. He would be a boiler-plater.

Lawyer by training and experience, tend to be prosecutors or defenders.

The prosecutor has someone to convict, the defense counsel someone to protect.

It is not necessary to solve a crime to establish innocence beyond reasonable doubt.

In even exceptional cases the prosecutor does no more than prosecute and few care
about any more. While Weinstein is neither, he also is not an analyst. What the
Hiss, like most other similar political cases, never had was thorough and competent
analysis by one in a position to be followed by an effort to establish the accuracy
of the analysis.

Weinstein confuses bumbling for Hoover’s political objectives and the other
problems the FBI had with that case and situation. By Weinstein’s concepts 1 would
be immersed in FBI bumbling, i+ot so. It knew exactly what it was doing and does.

If you have tine reread Weinstein’s Times piece critically, teu will find that
you can attribute what appears to ba careful, scholarly phrasing to what you have
seen in the FBI, covering his ass. At every critical point he covers himself against
future rebuttal. If I were a shrink I’d say he has at least subconscious awareness
and despite the apparent p03itiveness of Ms writing has doubts.

Aa an analyst I’d say ha fudges on the typewriter and over-writes Ms case by
avoiding the central fact - when was the Woodstock manufactured, when purchased new.

This would make his case airtight. It is totally absent.

As an analyst I've seen Ms kind of strawmen raised often enough, usually as
he does, in generalities that avoid the ssx essence, '•‘■‘his is where he pretnda to
quote so-called Hiss defenders. While this, too, aay seen to be a normal and. proper
approach I do not regard it this way. " i ’t is an argument , an attempt to put clown. It
is unfactual and it is evasive. It is the identical seihod the House assassins
have been using, also effectively.

I azn not and don’t pretend to be a subject-expert on the Hiss case. la am
somewhat of an expert in cases of this nature after the fact and on the FBI and how
it works. It can work remarkably well and I’ve examined some of its really excellent
and diligent work. I as without doubt that the FBI traced the actual typewriter back
to the manufacturer and obtained the full story on the aerial number. 1 an not as
certain that it traced the purchase. I can see that it might have avoided this, perhaps
did on. purpose, not from bumbling. Once the claim that the typewriter was fabricated
was made the dates of manufacture and purchase became essential if anyone really cared
about truth. This might not establish truth but it could establish falsity. If by date
of purchase the serial number of manufacture doesn't fii then there is something ser-
iously wrong. So why doesn t XeisBtein give us tlais information?

Kissing in Weinstein’s lineup of strawmen is a simple question: could it have
been someone else? I believe there was and that beginning with what Weinstein says in
this piece could be found by a competent investigator who is and begins as a competent
analyst. If x. were doing it I would begin, with some of what Weinstein presents and then
ignores not froa dishonesty but because he got lost in the forest of excess information.